William E. Arnal is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan. Arnal earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto where he studied with longtime Jesus Seminar Fellow John Kloppenborg. He focuses primarily on Christian origins, the New Testament, gnosticism, and theories of religion.

Arnal is the author of three books, The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction of Contemporary Identity (2005), Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (2001), and Whose Historical Jesus? (1997). He is currently working on three contributions for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible—“Judas (not Iscariot),” “Galilee,” and “Banditry.”

In 1998, he won the Canadian Governor-General’s Gold Academic Medal from the University of Toronto as the top doctoral graduate in arts and social sciences. He is also the recipient of the Frank W. Beare Book Award from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (2002) and the Golden Dozen Teaching Award from New York University (2000), among others.

Books

The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction of Contemporary Identity, 2005

Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q, 2001